Do Today's MBAs need Analytical Skills?

Do today’s MBAs need Analytical Skills?That was the question that a recent Symposium
tried to answer.

On October 21, George
Washington University’s
Institute for Integrating Statistics in Decision Sciences (I2SDS)
and IBM’s Analytics
Solution Center
held a Symposium entitled: Analytics and the 21st Century MBA.The abstract provides a good description of
the thesis of the Symposium:

The 21st century belongs to those who can think and act analytically. No
longer is it good enough to make business decisions, no matter what the field,
based on little more than feelings or gut reactions to events. Consumer
products companies, insurance companies, banks, governments, and even sports
teams are turning to Analytics to improve their bottom line and assure their
survivability in this age of hyper-competition and increasingly severe
externalities.

This Symposium… will demonstrate how Analytics is, a critical component
of 21st Business careers, whether the practitioner's primary responsibility is
in a functional area (Marketing, Operations, Finance, Strategy, International
Business, HR) or a vertical such as Health Care or Tourism.